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For all the attention fake news has earned over the last year, fake online reviews have managed to stay mostly out of the spotlight. But that tide is starting to shift as review sabotage reaches new heights.

Take the CNN mobile app for example, which suffered thousands of 1-star reviews at the hands of Trump supporters and others hellbent on systematically tanking the app’s rating after the network’s treatment of a Reddit user. Or take theBoca Raton Resort, a Florida hotel that got slammed with negative reviews after a Youtube star angry at his treatment rallied his fanbase to retaliate online.

Given the impact online reviews have on consumer buying decisions, it’s perhaps unsurprising that some unscrupulous business owners looking to get a leg up will coordinate similar attacks on their competitors’ review platforms.

Woodsum is an e-commerce entrepreneur who owns a bill reduction company called Bill Slasher. They renegotiate customers’ phone and cable bills to save them money.

In early 2018, Woodsum launched a Google Adwords campaign targeting the leading competitor in the space, Billshark. When people searched for “Billshark,” they found Bill Slasher’s advert at the top of search results.

Billshark wasn’t happy. Within 12 hours of launching that advert, Woodsum says the Bill Slasher Facebook page was flooded with 1-star reviews. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that they came from Billshark’s executive team, employees, and family members. Even the CEO’s wife was involved.

As Woodsum watched his company’s review average plummet from a 4.9 to a 2.5, he realized he had a full-fledged crisis on his hands.

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Bad Solutions To A Horrible Problem

Most review platforms have guidelines prohibiting reviews that don’t reflect true business transactions. When asked to comment, BillShark’s CEO Steven McKean — who maintains that they’ve done nothing wrong — pointed out that this guideline “is not prominent or noted at all when leaving reviews on the Facebook page.”

I tried leaving my own Facebook review (and even reviewed Facebook’s Community Standards) and found that McKean is correct, though there areHelp pages online that suggest “You can report reviews that…don't focus on the product or service offered by the Page.”

Woodsum tried reporting the reviews but Facebook didn’t reply to his requests.

“It’s definitely an area where Facebook could improve,” said Jenny Biller, a freelance Social Media Strategist who specializes in Facebook management.

“Some larger Facebook advertisers have direct access to Facebook support,” Biller explained. “But people that don’t advertise on Facebook might have the hardest time getting fake reviews taken care of since they don’t have that option.“

Woodsum actually does advertise on Facebook but not enough to get him access to ad support, and his multiple attempts to report the reviews have gone unanswered.

He finally decided totake down his Facebook reviews entirely. It’s an option unique to Facebook, where business owners can choose to hide all reviews, both good and bad, from their Facebook pages.

Turning off the platform’s review feature entirely does technically help you avoid the fake content, but it also means you avoid the real content too. And for consumers that rely on online reviews as a prerequisite to purchasing, those missing reviews can be as damaging as a low rating.

Woodsum admits it wasn’t a great option, but it was the best he could do while he scrambled to come up with another solution.

(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Review Sabotage: A Spreading Disease

The size of the fake review problem is hard to gauge. At the end of 2017, it was estimated that as many as267 million Facebook users were fake or duplicates, though it’s unclear how many were involved in fake review schemes. To make matters more confusing, that number also doesn’t take into account fake reviews from real accounts, like those of the Billshark team.

Of course, Facebook isn’t the only platform suffering from this affliction. Fake reviews on Google is a “massive problem,” according to Joy Hawkins, a Google Top Contributor and local search expert. Hawkins penned anopen letter to Google last year, asking that they get serious about addressing the issue.

When asked for comment, a Google spokesperson admitted that, “Spammers and others with negative intent are a problem for consumers, businesses and technology companies that provide local business information. We’re always working on new and better ways to fight these issues and keep our information up to date.”

Hawkins is skeptical though.

“Google tells you it's a priority and that it's working on it,” Hawkins told CNBC in April. “But at the end of the day, based on the progress I've seen in the last couple years, I just don't think it is.”

Even Yelp, a platform known for its aggressive and proactive filtering system, can’t seem to put an end to review sabotage. For those that remember the story about Cecil the lion, check outDr. Walter Palmer’s Yelp page to see the fake review aftermath that remains and continues three years later.

Photo by studioEAST/Getty Images

Making the Most of a Flawed System

Of the dozens of experts I polled for this article, one suggestion was nearly unanimous: be proactive about earning positive reviews from happy customers. Don’t wait until you have a crisis to start making those requests -- it’s much easier to deal with a handful of negative fake reviews when you already have hundreds of real positives to mitigate their impact.

Woodsum eventually followed this advice. He turned Bill Slasher’s Facebook reviews back on and responded to the competitors’ reviews openly, calling them out for what they did. He also encouraged his existing base of happy customers to leave positive reviews.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but the loyal support of Bill Slasher’s happy customers did get the company’s review average back above a 4.0.

Admittedly, this advice only goes so far. For businesses that suffer larger-scale attacks than Bill Slasher did, existing happy customers may not be of much assistance.

In either case, reporting the fake reviews is the next best step. The trick, however, is finding the platform’s guidelines that those reviews violate. It’s a tedious process but one that’s well worth the effort if the reviews are removed. The time and expertise required has encouraged the growth of online review management services, and there are even tools like Objection.co that claim to find Terms of Service violations for negative reviews, both real and fake.

“More often than not, if you can prove that the review violates their policies, then these platforms typically remove the review,” saidJacques Hart, co-founder of Roar Media, a communications firm based in Florida.

“The problem is that these platforms severely understaff their review monitoring departments,” Hart continued, “and it is sometimes very difficult and time consuming to get them to respond and take action.”

Woodsum is finding that to be true nearly two months after the original incident.

Even trickier are negative reviews with no text at all. “Those are the hardest reviews to get rid of because most violation guidelines relate to text,” Hawkins explained.

Even so, you can make your case if you have supporting evidence of foul play. Classic examples include multiple negative reviews all posted at one time or reviewers that post reviews of companies in various locations in a short period of time.

If you’re dealing with Facebook, you can take the extra step of reporting the profiles that left the reviews too. This isn’t super helpful if the accounts are real -- as in Woodsum’s case -- but it can work wonders if you’ve been attacked by hundreds of bot-like accounts.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Where Do We Go From Here?

In speaking with Biller, Hawkins, and other experts, it became clear just how ill-equipped review platforms are to handle review sabotage.

“Make sure you have access to all of your social media and review site profiles and listings. And make sure you claim any duplicate pages,” Biller told me among a series of other steps businesses ought to take to improve their chances of removing fake reviews.

“If you don’t, and a fake reviews crisis happens, then you’ll have more work to do before getting the situation resolved.”

It made me wonder: why should the burden to defend against fake reviews be on business owners? We look to Zuckerberg for a solution to Facebook’s fake news problem, so why not when it comes to fake reviews? We expect Google to protect us from spammy search results, so why not expect the same for spammy reviews?

Review platforms want businesses to use them. And in my experience, businesses want to use review platforms too. But online reviews will never achieve their full potential until the platforms that police them get better at catching and addressing policy violations. Until then, the trust of both consumers and businesses hang in the balance.

Ryan Erskine is Director of Client Services at BrandYourself.com, a leading online reputation management firm, and the first DIY platform that makes it simple for people…

Ryan Erskine is Director of Client Services at BrandYourself.com, a leading online reputation management firm, and the first DIY platform that makes it simple for people to take control of their own search results. As a 24-year old copywriter writing marketing copy for startups and major brands, Erskine joined BrandYourself as a Brand Strategist to help empower individuals to tell their stories too. He has helped lead the company through rapid growth, including a notable appearance on Shark Tank and an award on the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing companies. Erskine is the author of Online Reputation Management: The 28 Day Challenge, a guide to help people strategize, build, and maintain a powerful digital presence.